PayPal Cuts off Ties with Alex Jones on Grounds of Hate Mongering

The payment processing giant PayPal announced today that it is going to cut off all ties with InfoWars, a website created by Alex Jones. Paypal accused the website of promoting hatred and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religion.

The complete PayPal announcement is detailed below:

“At PayPal, we are guided by a core set of values. Chief among these is inclusion. Our values are a compass for how we behave as a company. Our values are the foundation for the decision we made this week – to end our business relationship with Infowars and its related websites.

We understand this decision will be controversial to some. As a company, we take seriously our responsibility to ensure that our values are at the core of everything we do, and we will take action to stand for our values.

We do not take these actions lightly and we work hard to be rigorous and fair-minded. We undertookan extensive review of the Infowars sites, and found instances that promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions that run counter to our core value of inclusion. We believe that hatred and discrimination have no place in our democratic society and, we do not support this conduct.

Striking the necessary balance between upholding free expression and open dialogue and protecting principles of tolerance, diversity and respect for all people is a challenge that many companies are grappling with today. We work hard to achieve the right balance and to ensure that our decisions are values-driven and not political. We understand, given the current divisions in our democracy, that some of our decisions will be unpopular. But our commitment to our customers and our employees is to consistently live by and uphold our values. Above all, that means working constantly to ensure that PayPal is not used by anyone as a platform for perpetuating hate and discriminatory intolerance.”